Ahren Warner, Poet

Ahren Warner was born in Oxford, England in 1986. He has been published in several journals and has performed his poetry across the United Kingdom. Most notably performing for David Putnam, director of Chariot’s of Fire and on occasion alongside Michelle Scally-Clarke and Jim Bennett in such venues as The Everyman Theatre, Liverpool. He has won poetry slams and has attracted attention from the likes of Andrew Motion, England’s Poet Laureate and the national press. ©2003 Ahren Warner all rights reserved

Wet Dogs And A PVC Clad George Bush.
…O stranger of the future!
…whatever the shape of your house
…I bet nobody there likes a wet dog either.’

-Billy Collins, To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now


Enough ice for enough whisky
to make the whole world pissed
to the point of sounding like a George Bush speech.
That much ice has melted away from the North Pole.
But on your T.V. the president of the U.S.A
reassures us, global warming is not that bad.

Fixed with a smile, and respectable hair
One of Reagan’s suits, buttoned up, tucked in
by a clone of his mother; she being sold
to fund his presidential campaign.
Behind this all American you can still see
a man who wants to tie up the world,
dress in black PVC and spank us all
until we believe in the great American dream.

But I bet like you, in hundreds of years
or maybe ten, when the right wing is dead
or humanity is, whichever kills the other first.
Somebody somewhere will miss the smell of Reagan’s suit.
So is it that hard to imagine missing a wet dog
When we have ate them all. Sat in our nuclear bunkers
then rebuilt the world. Maybe a stranger
born in some distant country hundreds of years from now
will miss that wet dog, seeing it in illustrations
and reading your lines, feeling salt in the wound.
Is that not the danger of writing for the future?

April in Paris.

A film noir that might make old Kazuo smile
in the continuity of morning or not wanting
to break that smile; in the memories that come.
When dusk and clouds meet in Parisian cellars
to discuss panning left to right and darkened days.
If I’d stood and stared from a newspaper stand
with a dime for the man and a brim filled with rain
and a cigar to add to the shot of you, the girl in red.
One of a hundred shades of grey, but the soundtrack
leaves us assured; that particular grey is red.


If you’d hired me to find out you killed your man
and now were singing in the streets, out your head
waiting for me to take you back to mine to let
your guilt slip out my mind as you slip out that dress
and the light fade and die after that first telling kiss.
The rest left to the imagination, or already said.


And wouldn’t candles top it off? Those they sell
where I’m stood against. In Technicolor and you in greys
out your head and playing music I’ve only heard
whilst watching old Kazuo’s smile fade.


I’ll drop my silver coins and carry on
        as your red dress slips away.

Gagner le mort
“Throughout human history, architecture, mother of all arts, has provided shrines for religion, houses for living and tombs for the dead’ –Bannister Fletcher.


I’ve bought a red brick house, mortgage payments and discounted rates
that will tie me down to reality for enough years for one to slip away.
The bricks are cold but I’ve learnt their connotations of warmth.


I have an oak door hinged to my red bricks, magnolia walls,
surfaces and beige carpets, pastel furniture where I sit, now
that everything is were it fits and I’m as aware as I should be.


Each plastic transaction, or coin in the hand, cheque or
choice to switch the channel, routs the skin with a slit from
knee to ankle, head to chest, prints barcode lines of various lengths.


And I’m happy with my red bricks, that each crumpled note
in mine or another’s hand was hand picked, that the channels
I’ve watched and the channels I’ve flicked all fit.


The precision plan, precisely that has got me where I am, now
too scared to do another thing, to stroke the cold, red brick tomb.

Note: “Gagner le mort’ translates from the French as "To win the death''

It Disturbs Me.

You look tired this time
all the others in full flow.
Slowed down to a gentler pace
makers you meet in every second step.
Timor mortis conturbat me.

It is as if…this line
was meant for every anthology
                    paid for in vain.
It is the lines on this bent spine
that make your eyes age recklessly.


It is as if those lines spreading
away from tired eyes;
everyone else ageing recklessly


Makers you meet in dreams
where time stops to observe others fatigue
and every second step breeds screams
which get no reply.


We look tired with time.
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Layman.

“Throughout human history, architecture, mother of all arts, has provided shrines for religion, houses for living and tombs for the dead’ Bannister Fletcher.


Does the presence or absence of a subject
cause shadows? I do not know.
In Jerusalem, midday does not seem to come;
            the shadows drift
                    unrepentantly.


Each block could be laid on arctic ice
as it melts with the voices that turn,
knot. Jerusalem, I mean, but the shadows that fall
Rome and Lourdes, the white man, the black child
the chorus of a contrapuntal southern drawl.


Fists in faces and the bruising
eye. Burst vessels that take their time
to scar. Tissue that can be worn
like a crucifix; white hot.


Prehistoric shrines of massive stones
of astounding size. Pick one, any one
to lift and delicately place
                    on another                 on your own.

Those that come to sacred ground with walls that house beliefs.
Pay respect to the priests who crippled themselves to build those walls
                    or implored believers.

Still Life.


Paper; wet and dried
           stale and shrunk. To form
these green leaves
        of this still life.


Spot lit by the lithium starved argon buzz of omnipresence


(Leaving even god in awe;
wishing to be fluorescent)


Black Leaves, two white
        All green until
The pot smashed;
        from this wall to that
                    sheets of paper floating;
            paper settling.

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